eirSpiders Digital Workshop

I had a very interesting morning yesterday when I went along to The Building Block in Sligo for the eirSpiders Digital Workshop. This was a free workshop aimed at Digital Marketing for business.

There was a lot of talk about ‘Digital Influencers’ I really don’t like that term but that seems to be the way things are going. Basically a digital influencer is a well known celebrity/blogger or someone with lots of followers who post about a certain product and their followers go and buy it. Some bloggers get paid by companies to do this.

I made a few notes from the session:

Sinead Carroll was one of the speakers, she runs the Irish Blogger Agency who tie businesses with ‘digital influencers’ https://www.irishbloggeragency.com/. Sinead has her own blog http://yummymummy.eu.com/ who also co-runs the Into the West Blogger Network. She even has a cocktail in Galway named after her – goals 😉

Sinead suggests finding a blogger that is passionate about what they blog about and one that is a right fit for your brand. She suggests giving them creative control of their blogs/social media posts. Build up an ongoing partnership with the blogger.

Have a budget for Social Media and track it for 3 months to see if it is providing any results. Great idea but bear in mind the bloggers on her agency books pay to be on it, so you won’t get access to every blogger.

 

Daniel Browne was next to speak. Daniel is involved with Ocean Media and Sea Sessions.

Target your Social Media to suit your market. Change whatever platform you are using to catch the different target markets.

The written word is almost obsolete. Visuals are the way to go and video is the best way. Sea Sessions reach 0.5 million yearly. One Facebook post in March generated €14000 in revenue the following day.

Tell your story differently for different platforms. Look at messaging apps as a way to promote business. Have unique, engaging content. Have an interactive website and keep it updated – ‘don’t have a dusty old window’. Be unique and authentic.

 

Barry Walsh  Head of Digital Marketing, Supermacs.

Supermacs have 320 different social media outlets throughout Ireland. They keep it about community.  Annalise the situation. What is working and what isn’t.

Know your target market; geographic, sociographic, psychographic, demographic, behavioural. Sell to your target market. No good having a great product if you don’t know who you are selling to.

Take people on a visual journey. Tell them a story through images.  Your website is the ambassador for business. Keep it up to date.

Make things easy for the customer, they want to find what they are looking for by the quickest route. Review goals, align channels, have an advertising budget.

After hearing all the speakers yesterday it got me thinking about my own blog – I will cover my thoughts in another post, so watch this space. The only thing I had an issue with was the expectations of different age categories. For instance it’s thought that only those under 35 would be interested in a music festival. Or ‘millennials’ – (another term I don’t like) are the best ones to sell beauty products. I disagree, I think a lot of people over 40 have the disposable income and would be very interesting in reading articles written by people in their age group. Also just because you are a certain age doesn’t mean that you don’t have a following on social media – or an outgoing, adventurous streak. Anyway – rant over!

If you missed this workshop there is another one taking place in Limerick on September 6th and another in Dublin on September 14th. These are free events and well worth going along to.